Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

She persisted. “Swear to me.”

“I swear on my mother’s life,” he said at last, then gave her a quick kiss and rolled away. “Go back to your pose so I can work on this painting enough to be able to finish it…”

The words of “after you are gone” hung in the air.

She wrapped the silk coverlet they’d brought with them around her and watched him dress. This is just a fling, she told herself. It meant no more to her than the other two times she’d had affairs, but she couldn’t make herself believe the lie.

She looked about the stone walls at the plants at the edges and wished she could stay here with him. Stay in this century, stay with this man. She even wanted to stay with the other people, with Faith and Amy. The whole household was abuzz with how Faith had miraculously “saved” Tristan’s uncle. Zoë had stopped by the orangery two days ago to see her.

“All I did was give him a bath and some food,” she said. “They were letting him starve to death.”

Zoë stared at her in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Faith said. “Who can understand it? But I’d read about things like this in books. There have been kings who have been starved to death under the orders of some so-called doctor.”

As Faith talked, Zoë walked around the big building, looking at it. “You’ve set this up like a home.” She motioned to the vines that grew at one end of the big greenhouse, and nodded toward the cabinets that were along the walls. “This looks like a set for a movie about Merlin.” The cabinet tops were covered with mortars and pestles, and copper pans; herbs were hanging from the ceiling and spilling out of the drawers.

“My laboratory,” Faith said. “Here, smell this.” She opened a glass jar and held it out to Zoë.

“Wonderful. What is it?”

“I have soap, shampoo, and face cream. They’re all made by Beth from secret recipes handed down from the women in her family. The products work beautifully and the smell is heaven. I’ve never encountered anything like it in all my years of working with herbs.”

“I had no idea you knew so much about these old herbs.”

“I wasn’t aware that I did either,” she said, looking out the window to where William sat in a chair in the sun, Thomas hovering nearby. “You know something, Zoë? I’m finding out that I know a lot more about everything than I thought I did.”

“Me, too,” Zoë said.

Now, holding the cloth about her nude body, Zoë looked at the plants in the tower. “I know what these plants are and what they’re used for.”

“And what is that?” Russell asked as he walked toward her. He took the cloth off her, spread it out on the floor in front of the bushes, and got her back into position as she told him what Faith had told her. When she’d finished, she said, “I knew I’d smelled something like these bushes before, and it was in the jars that Faith had.”

“The family secret,” Russell said as he went back to his easel. “A weak one as secrets go.”

“So tell me what other secrets you’ve found out in your travels.”

“They mostly seem to involve mistresses.”

“Ah,” Zoë said. “Men who love the kitchen maid but marry the heiress.”

“Exactly,” he said.

&nb

sp; They looked at each other and smiled, letting themselves believe that if they were in the same situation they wouldn’t be that stupid.

Twenty

“Tristan,” Amy said, “I can’t stay here all day. I have too many things to do. I—”

He pulled her back to the blanket spread on the ground in the center of the secluded grove of trees by the lake. “My great-grandfather planted these trees and the shrubs,” he said, ignoring her words. “See how they make a perfect circle? And no one can see in here except from the lake. Every man who has seen this thinks he is the only one to think of its use as a trysting place. I thought I was going to have to wrestle Russell for this space. He and that girl of his have spent whole days in here.”

“Zoë?” Amy asked, sitting on the far edge of the blanket. After dinner, he had come to her in the kitchen and said that there was something that he needed her for. From his expression she thought that there’d been a disaster. She didn’t say a word, just followed him out of the house, and didn’t protest when he lifted her onto his horse, then got on behind her.

When she saw the picnic he’d had laid out for them in the seclusion of the little grove of trees and aromatic shrubs, she tried to protest, but she couldn’t. “Tristan, please,” was all she could say as he stood on the ground and looked up at her on the horse.

“Come, sit with me. I have wine from France.” He held up his arms to her and she nearly fell into them. He carried her to the blanket. As he poured her some wine, he said, “How long has it been since you had a full night’s sleep?”